For a fleeting moment, an hour into the fourth day's play, just before Stuart Broad found the edge of Peter Fulton's dangling bat, New Zealand nursed grand thoughts of winning the first Test.

They had clung on to England's coat-tails tenaciously; Tim Southee had produced a 10-wicket performance to send his opponents wickets tumbling and the Kiwis required 239 runs to take a dormie lead into the second Test.

An hour later, as the players trooped off the pitch for lunch, the dream was in tatters: the scoreboard read 29 for six, five of the scalps going to Broad in a devastating spell of fast-medium, new-ball bowling that in the end was to bring him seven for 44, the best figures of his career and the man-of-the-match award.

Forty minutes after the restart Broad was collecting a souvenir stump and taking the plaudits of the crowd. New Zealand had been dismissed for 68, with Jimmy Anderson, overshadowed this time around, taking two for 23. The denouement arrived in comedic fashion: young Billy Root, Joe's brother fielding as substitute, misjudged a swirling top edge from Neil Wagner, dropping what would have been the winning catch, but the ball then found its way back to Anderson, the bowler, as Wagner and Trent Boult found themselves stranded in the middle of the pitch.

Broad and Anderson bowled unchanged through the 22.4 overs that the innings lasted, which meant there was no chance to see what damage Graeme Swann might have done. After the presentations, as the crowd drifted away, there was Steve Finn, also surplus to requirement, going through his bowling practice on the square.

It would be wrong to suggest that England's win was unexpected. The conditions have given the bowlers a chance right throughout the game. But by the fourth day, as well as the ball swinging nicely, the seam was biting in the dusty surface, jagging disarmingly and consistently. On the previous evening, before he departed with a leg strain, Bruce Martin, the New Zealand left-arm spinner, had spun one delivery sharply, not from the bowlers's rough but from the unsullied part of the pitch: there is little question that given the chance Swann would have been a handful and probably a match winner.

Statistically, too, the odds were stacked against New Zealand. Only twice have a side made more in the fourth innings of a Lord's Test to win: when West Indies made a mockery of David Gower's declaration in 1984 and made 344 for one and 20 years later when England made 282 for three to beat New Zealand, .

Those were different surfaces to this one, though: times do change, targets do seem to provide less of a challenge, especially on modern pitches, many of which, rather than deteriorate actually get easier for batting as a match progresses. This was different, however – a tricky proposition. An educated surmisal first thing was that even with their overnight lead of 205 England were the strongest of favourites ,with even 150 providing a real challenge.

No one surely could have seen this one coming as it did, though. Broad was as superb as he had been indifferent in the first innings, a bowler for whom the word "mercurial" might have been coined.

No England bowler of recent times can get on a wicket-taking roll quite as he does, so that the surprise comes not when he takes a wicket but when he does not. Fulton, the double-centurion of Auckland, was ineptly, flat-footedly culpable, as was Kane Williamson, who drove a wide half volley with precision to mid-off.

But the left-hander Hamish Rutherford could do little about the thing that pitched outside his leg stump and sent his off stump cartwheeling, while Ross Taylor was undone by a perfect combination of length, line and seam movement that was just too good. When Anderson had Dean Brownlie taken at slip and Broad gained a fifth wicket by slipping Brendon McCullum the seam bowlers's googly, as it were, the game was already up.

But this was hardly a performance free of blemish by England. Their first-day batting, in which despite the sluggish scoring they lost only four wickets, certainly helped to set up the win, particularly when placed in the context of how batsmen fared generally thereafter.

But even so, and given the exceptional discipline of the New Zealand attack, the lack of urgency was a concern, and if some of the more scatterbrained helter-skelter running between the wickets in the second innings was anything to go by, something that had been discussed.

Nor, with the exception of Anderson who was outstanding, was the first-innings seam bowling up to scratch, with Ross Taylor, in particular, fed a diet of his favourite cut shot to let the Kiwis off the hook. Broad beautifully rectified this error in length in the second innings, while Finn did not get the chance.

It is clear from the scorecards that against diligent bowling no batsman could ever be said to be truly in. But following the third-wicket stand of 123 between Root and Jonathan Trott on Saturday England contrived to lose their last eight wickets for 54 runs, in a collapse reminiscent of the bad old days when their innings used to be likened to a Chuckle Brothers deck chair.

Perhaps in their minds at start of play England knew they had sufficient already and knew anything extra was a bonus, but in a low scoring match, where one innings of inspiration matched to luck can win the day, that would be a risky thing to do. The second Test starts at Headingley on Friday and there is still work to do.